This past weekend students attended an academic Invitational UIL meet at Lampasas High School. UIL is a Texas organization that creates contests for students to compete with others who have decided to specialize in a specific scholarly area.

“The best part of UIL is the opportunity to show how much you have learned over the year and compete against other schools,” UIL coordinator Michael Hjort said. “If a student were to finish in the top three in the state, they can earn scholarship money.”

At the meet, for the first time in Rouse history, teams altogether won the Sweepstakes trophy for having more points than any other competing school. They will compete again this Saturday at Westwood High School.

“We will be facing our most difficult competition this weekend,” Hjort said. “We hope to compete well there as a precursor to our district meet March 25.”

At Lampasas, students placed in Journalism, Ready Writing, Social Studies, Literary Criticism, Current Issues, Calculator, Number Sense, Computer Science and Word Power.

“I got fourth in Word Power and seventh in Ready Writing,” junior Cierra George said. “After placing in these events I felt very accomplished. It’s a great feeling.”

Along with competing, students get the opportunity to build relationships with fellow team members.

“To me, the best part of attending UIL meets is the downtime between events,” George said. “You get to study for upcoming contests and play games with your friends.”

Collectively, the Ready Writing and Journalism students both won first place as a team last weekend. Junior Kailey Hahn, a member of the Journalism team, medaled in every event in which she competed.

“I was shocked to have placed in any category, let alone three,” Hahn said. “Now, I hope to keep improving and placing at future meets.”